Maeve Cornwall

Maeve Cornwall, the Duchess of Cornwall (Maeve Brynhildr Veronica Cornwall; 17 January 1832 – 7 May 1915) was the Governess, Political Adviser, Personal Companion and Duchess of the Cornwall Estate, as well as it`s subsequent holdings. The younger daughter of Duke Alfred Cornwall and Duchess Armenia Cornwall, and the only sibling of Duchess Brynhildr Cornwall (later Kirkland).

Maeve spent much of her childhood with her parents and sister. Her life changed dramatically at the age of seventeen, when her twenty-year-old sister, Duchess Brynhildr Cornwall decided to travel across the North Atlantic Ocean to New York City, and finally onto Virginia to a planation in the United States to be the governess to a rich and ennobled family. Her own Governess, Lilac Lavender Warfield, personally taught Maeve much of her socializing skills, and how to be polite. During the war years, the young Maeve worried for her younger sister, and was the companion of a young Victoria (who was several years her senior). In 21 August, 1893, her governess died and left Maeve with a lingering feeling of hopelessness in the world; she even desired to follow her to the United States, but her parents who feared for her safety refused her request. Queen Victoria, who became a close friend to the young Duchess, called Maeve "honorable and unable to lie, she would rather cut her tongue out than lie." Both women were enamored with each other, respecting each other, with Queen Victoria rejecting possible husbands for Maeve based on the thought of Maeve having a husband who would love and cherish her friend like her own husband, Prince Albert; while she would die with the regret of not having found her close friend a husband, she would never know of the existence of Josephine March, the only daughter and her bastard child. Though Josephine was a bastard child, the House of March accepted her as their new leader; they even legitimized her marriage to Peter March, making Maeve the Duchess of the Cornwall Estate and the March Estate. Maeve was a highly-liked member of Victorian-era High Society, as she neither flaunted her wealth nor mistreated her servants;